In my more than thirty years in Washington, D.C., I have grown to have a general respect for the people who work in politics (the executive and legislative branches) and the various journalistic media. I have also come to appreciate the pragmatic constraints under which these people work and how those constraints and demands affect their work. Politicians for the most part are well-meaning people, some smarter than others, who sincerely represent their points of view, and do so with the interests of their constituents at heart. While I have at times held some politician in contempt for the position he or she has espoused, when I have met them, they were likeable, serious people who were fervent about what they were doing and did not see themselves as simply obstructionist. People from the press and electronic media are also well-meaning people, some smarter than others, trying to serve democracy by informing people about their government and the issues that affect their lives.
Nonetheless, both estates struggle to coexist in a complex manner that serves the other, uses the other, and mistreats the other. These people need each other in order to exist. They feed each other and feed upon each other. They need each other to keep their jobs and, more so, to advance, but frequently advancement comes at the cost of another.
There is a certain arrogance of information in Washington. Information is king. Staffers on Capitol Hill feel quite powerful, knowing what their representative or senator is thinking, planning, and strategizing. They are frequently young and fervent, and they both serve and derive their power from their bosses. They can be well-studied in a given topic, but generally their study is directed to a certain end. They will study why some issue should not be legislated, ignoring why it should.
Senators and representatives in Congress need the media to get their positions across to their constituents, succeed in their legislative goals, and popularize themselves with the voters.
Reporters, producers, commentators, pundits, all derive power from gaining information and presenting it to their respective audiences before others do. They study an issue — sometimes deeply, sometimes not — in order to give a brief report in a prime spot in their media. They gain information from access to the politicians and their staffs and other government officials. In order to have that access, they must not offend or misuse the information they have gained.
All these people have their own narcissistic vulnerability. They must all dance this dance without deeply injuring each other. It becomes amazingly complex sometimes when their personal narcissistic stakes are high. It also becomes complex when one or another of these people from either part of this dynamic develops deeper personal issues that alter their judgment or actions.
There is an astonishing dissonance in this mutual need, as they lend credence to one another and take advantage of one another. One evening, not long ago, at a dinner party in which a very senior and highly respected journalist was a fellow guest, the conversation between us came around to sensitivities in Washington. “Listen, Harvey, don't you believe for one minute what we all say, politicians and press alike: that one has to have a thick skin to work in this city. No one has a thick skin in this city. We all have our narcissism hanging out on the target range, and it hurts to get shot at or hit.” This distinguished man knew his topic. His career had suffered all the slings and arrows that excellence attracts.
From a most unpsychologically minded man came the truth. It really is about narcissism. These folk ply their trade in the public sector, and the payback is affirmation of a type of grandiosity: They can reach, and possibly influence, thousands, even millions of people. The risk is the humiliation of being publicly irrelevant. Some handle this risky situation better than others, depending on their respective character organization.
I sometimes feel as though I am watching a very large extended family operate with a sense of desperation over control of the family estate and legacy. They all feel they are right, or that they know something better than the others, and they tend to distort and sometimes demonize the other.
In this family of people who endeavor publicly, the risk of humiliation is great. Therefore the vulnerability is proportionally greater. What has changed since I arrived in Washington is the exponential growth of what we call media, and particularly mega-corporate ownership of media. Watergate changed all the rules. Private lives are no longer considered off-limits. However, this is not true equally of both politician and journalist. The journalist still enjoys relative privacy, but the politician has lost all — and it is solely at the discretion of the journalist.
It is commonly said in Washington that the relationship between journalist and politician has become a blood sport. I prefer to see it as a dysfunctional family that operated well enough once, with every person in his or her place, but in which there has been a power or privilege shift. The family members have lost all civility and perspective with each other. It is as if their very existence were at jeopardy. The unavoidable need for each other and the current state of business and ethics has created a sad state of affairs. They either pander to each other, awaiting a moment to score some sort of victory, or they are on the attack.
Here we begin to see the inequality. The journalist can attack the politician, but the politician cannot directly attack back. Spiro Agnew tried that, and the rest was history. The politician cannot even cry “unfair” without weakening his or her public position. The public doesn't care about the private lives of journalists, so even that form of retaliation does not work. This inequality, combined with the loss of a journalistic code of conduct and the narcissistic nature of both groups, has created the current bloody atmosphere.
There are inconsistencies. Nothing was sacred with the Lewinsky affair, but no one reported President Reagan's progressive impairment, which was suspected by the press. When I asked why, a journalist said, “Would you have us report that the leader of the most powerful nation was impaired?” For me that was not a rhetorical question. I can imagine that was newsworthy. However, there seemed to be a silent agreement to keep this private. The fact that President Bush signed one of his first executive orders to create a panel to work on the
Harvey L. Rich, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation.
assessment and declaration of impairment in a President was quietly covered. To this day, the press does not “investigate” that story, because it would have to investigate itself. While it was widely suspected that President Bush also “played around,” it was barely reported. “It was not newsworthy,” was the response. “It was a matter of his private life.” Bush didn't lie — but then he was not asked the question.
There are many reasons for such inconsistencies. I believe there are also unconscious reasons. Bush never evoked the erotic interests of journalists. Clinton was just too sexy. Bush was pablum; Clinton was spicy food. There are many recent examples where transferences shaped the journalistic coverage of a person: Kenneth Starr, Linda Tripp, Jesse Helms, Al Gore, George W. Bush, and many others. Journalists are not immune from positive and negative transferences.
A new problem that has entered the dynamic of journalistic-political relations is the high profiles of journalists themselves. They are now television celebrities in their own right. To maintain that status they must maintain their personal ratings. They must say and do what it takes.
There has been some introspection on the part of media regarding their own celebrity. Some journalists do not choose to go on “talking head” television shows. They feel it compromises their neutrality. Others clearly do not suffer these misgivings.
The times have changed and the rules have changed. It is less stable now. This is not the first time in history that the relationship between politics and journalism was destabilized and became rough going. In the nineteenth century, the press was vicious and survived on muckraking. But now the relationship is even less stable because of the extensive reach of electronic communications and mega-corporate ownership of the media.
The tense relationship between politician and journalist will always exist because they need each other. However, the public may be less well served because of the insertion of basic mistrust. As in a family that operates well with the rules and rulers in place, when the rulers pass and the rules change the basic tenets of trust are changed. We recently witnessed the passing of one of the rulers for this very reason. Helen Thomas, the official senior White House correspondent, resigned her position with UPI (and along with it, her status in the White House press room) because UPI was purchased by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his church. She, of all people, knows the rules. She also knew that her new boss did not feel bound to them. She felt she had no choice. The real question for me is, What does this do to the public interest?